Having Diabetes and Trying Not To

This week finds us balancing the work of living with diabetes with work towards awareness and a cure.

A month and several packages of juice boxes later we're getting a handle on a low blood sugar trend.  It will undoubtedly morph into a high blood sugar trend very soon, requiring a restoration of the basal and carb settings as if the whole episode had never occurred.

Yesterday was our fall endocrinologist appointment.  My daughter's A1C was down, probably not just from the aforementioned low trend, so that was good news. The charts and graphs looked pretty nice. Bad news? It's time for annual blood work.

Meanwhile, we're collecting materials to make postcards this weekend for the World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange.  This will be our third year participating.  It's fun to create and write our cards, and particularly fun to get mail!

The middle school had its annual JDRF Kids Walk last Friday.  My daughter has gotten involved in the club that runs it.  She made announcements and helped put up posters. She went around at lunch all week collecting donations in exchange for kids writing their names on paper sneakers. She learned yesterday that they raised over $1000.

This Saturday is our local JDRF walk. We've managed to recruit a few new team members this year, and our fundraising is going well.  It also looks like (fingers crossed) the sun will shine!

On one hand it feels like it's all diabetes all the time around here. Can we not think, talk, write about anything else? On the other hand, having these positive diabetes activities to balance the everyday burdensome ones isn't bad.  We're feeling supported and encouraged by our personal community and the diabetes community at large.  And we feel like we're doing something to change our circumstances in the long run.

Walk season and November's diabetes awareness month are when we recharge our batteries.  Like sponges, we suck up the kindness and hope.  The notes which come with donations, the surprise support for our walk team, the $1000 raised at the school, the postcards, the buildings lit in blue, the people in the media talking about and advocating about diabetes are all absorbed in the fall.  At 2 a.m. on a Wednesday in February when I'm standing by my daughter's bed surrounded by empty juice boxes and feeling defeated by this crummy disease, I hope I can draw on some of the hope and encouragement which surrounds me today.